Big Oil Increasingly Open To Carbon Tax To Head Off More Stringent Environmental Regulations
The Washington Times cites Director of the Center for Energy and Environment Myron Ebell on the carbon tax:
Myron Ebell, the director of the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment, argued the embrace of carbon pricing results from a desire by companies to “advantage themselves.” The maneuvering, according to Mr. Ebell, started long before the Biden administration took office.
“Most of the major oil companies, starting with the European ones, have supported a carbon tax for a long time,” he told The Washington Times. “Of course they haven’t lobbied for it fully. They’ve generally proposed it, though, to disadvantage coal over natural gas, since the latter is much less carbon-intensive.”
A similar calculus, Mr. Ebell contended, was now being used in hopes of “easing up the war on Big Oil.”
“The belief by some oil and energy companies appears to be that if there is a [carbon] tax they would no longer be target number one,” he said. “A carbon tax is much less harmful to the bottom line of an oil company than all of these regulatory assaults on them at the federal level.
“They can pass that tax much easier on to consumers,” Mr. Ebell said.